New observations from Suzaku, a joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA X-ray observatory, have challenged scientists’ conventional understanding of white dwarfs. Observers had believed white dwarfs were inert stellar corpses that slowly cool and fade away, but the new data tell a completely different story.

At least one white dwarf, known as AE Aquarii, emits pulses of high-energy (hard) X-rays as it whirls around on its axis. "We’re seeing behavior like the pulsar in the Crab Nebula, but we’re seeing it in a white dwarf," says Koji Mukai of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The Crab Nebula is the shattered remnant of a massive star that ended its life in a supernova explosion.

Neurosurgeons from the University of California, San Francisco are reporting significant results of a new brain mapping technique that allows for the safe removal of tumors near language pathways in the brain. The technique minimizes brain exposure and reduces the amount of time a patient must be awake during surgery.

Perhaps even more profound, the study provides new data that refines scientists’ understanding of how language is organized within the human cortex. It identifies new regions involved in speech production, reading and naming. The team used this data to generate a three-dimensional cortical language map that is more detailed and integrates more data than any language map of the brain ever generated.

Are we running out of helium? Lee Sobotka, professor of chemistry and physics at Washington University in St. Louis, says it is being depleted so rapidly in the world’s largest reserve, outside of Amarillo, Tex., that supplies are expected to be gone there within the next eight years.

The helium we have on earth is not readily renewable, it has been built up over billions of years from the decay of natural uranium and thorium. The decay of these elements proceeds at a super-snail’s pace.

It will impact more than balloons and kids' voices, Sobotka says. “Helium’s use in science is extremely broad but its most important use is as a coolant. Helium is non-renewable and irreplaceable.

A class of chemicals in red wine grapes may significantly reduce the ability of bacteria to cause cavities, according to a study published recently in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

The findings suggest that specific polyphenols, present in large amounts in fermented seeds and skins cast away after grapes are pressed, interfere with the ability of bacteria to contribute to tooth decay. Beyond cavities, the action of the wine grape-based chemicals may also hold clues for new ways to lessen the ability of bacteria to cause life-threatening, systemic infections.

Bacteria that eat sugar and release cavity-causing acid onto teeth may soon be made dramatically more vulnerable to their own acid. Researchers have identified key genes and proteins that, if interfered with, can take away the ability of a key bacterial species to thrive as its acidic waste builds up in the mouth.

The ability of Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) to survive in acid is one reason that the species is the main driver of tooth decay worldwide. Past research has shown that this ability has several components including a bacterial enzyme called fatty acid biosynthase M (FabM), which when shut down, makes S. mutans almost precisely 10,000 times more vulnerable to acid damage.

An international study investigating the carbon sink capacity of northern terrestrial ecosystems discovered that the duration of the net carbon uptake period (CUP) has on average decreased due to warmer autumn temperatures.

Net carbon uptake of northern ecosystems is decreasing in response to autumnal warming according to findings published in Nature. The carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems is particularly sensitive to climatic changes in autumn and spring. Over the past two decades autumn temperatures in northern latitudes have risen by about 1.1 °C with spring temperatures up by 0.8 °C.

Many northern terrestrial ecosystems currently lose carbon dioxide (CO2) in response to autumn warming, offsetting 90% of the increased carbon dioxide uptake during spring.

SANTA CLARA, California, January 2 /PRNewswire/ --

Marvell announced the TopDog 11n-450, an 802.11n 3x3 WLAN solution with three spatial streams, the industry's first 802.11n chip operating at 450 Megabits-per-second (Mbps). With maximum bandwidth more than eight times faster than 802.11g 54 Mbps versions and 1.5 times faster than current 802.11n 300 Mbps offerings, the new product will enable significant performance enhancements for notebooks and desktop PCs, printers, routers, set top boxes, digital TVs, gaming devices and DVD players and recorders. The TopDog 11n-450 provides 500 percent increased range over 802.11g, as well as 160 percent increased range compared to competing 802.11n solutions.

A married couple who sailed from England to America around 1630 may be the ancestors of hundreds of people alive today who are at risk for a hereditary form of colon cancer.

Researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at The University of Utah have discovered a founder mutation—a mutation that has been traced from many individuals in the present-day population back to a common ancestor—which may contribute to a significant percentage of colon cancer cases in the United States.

An article reporting the finding was published today in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Just as additives help gasoline burn cleaner, a research report published in the January 2008 print issue of The FASEB Journal shows that the food industry could take a similar approach toward reducing health risks associated with fatty foods.

These “meal additives” would be based on work of Israeli researchers who discovered that consuming polyphenols (natural compounds in red wine, fruits, and vegetables) simultaneously with high-fat foods may reduce health risks associated with these foods.

“We suggest a new hypothesis to explain polyphenols,” said Joseph Kanner, senior author of the report. “For the first time, these compounds were demonstrated to prevent significantly the appearance of toxic food derivative compounds in human plasma.”

The January 2008 issue of BioScience includes an article by biologist Edward O. Wilson that argues for a new perspective on the evolution of advanced social organization in some ants, bees, and wasps (Hymenoptera).

Wilson’s article surveys recent evidence that the high level of social organization called “eusociality,” found in some Hymenoptera (and rarely in other species), is a result of natural selection on nascent colonies of species possessing features that predispose them to colonial life. Wilson concludes that these features, principally progressive provisioning of larvae and behavioral flexibility that leads to division of labor, allow some species to evolve colonies that are maintained and defended because of their proximity to food sources.